A profibus is the abbreviation for a process field bus and is a field bus that Bosch, Klockener-Moeller, and Siemens have jointly developed. It is an industrial communication protocol that has been internationally designated as a standard by Germany standard DIN 19 245, European standard EN 50 170, and International standard IEC 61158.
The profibus is used for the real time communication between pieces of field equipment in the fields of production automation, process control, building automation, etc., includes profibus-FMS (Fieldbus Message Specification) for general-purpose automation, profibus-DP (Decentralized Periphery) for factory automation, and profibus-PA (Process Automation) for process control automation according to the application field, and generally, profibus-DP that is used mainly for factory automation is most widely used.
The profibus-DP is an open industrial network, uses layers corresponding to a physical layer, a data link layer, and a user layer, and has been designed so that a user can confirm many functions through the user layer for the optimization of performance. The physical layer mainly uses RS-485 but also supports optical fiber, and uses a specific transmitting line resisting noise to protect industrial sites.
FIG. 1 is a structural chart of a general profibus network.
Referring to FIG. 1, the profibus network may include a control unit 10, a GSD input unit 11, a user input unit 12, a storage unit 13, a display unit 14, a communication processing unit 15, a master device 16, and one or more slave devices 17.
The GSD input unit 11 receives GSD files acting as the basic information files of the slave devices 17 for enabling the master device 16 to control the slave devices, and transmits them to the control unit.
The control unit 10 receives profibus configuration information made by users from the user input unit 12, modifies the basic information in the GSD filed received from the GSD input unit 11 and the configuration information made by users on the basis of the slave devices 17 that are actual instruments installed at a site, and inspects the effectiveness of the values and associations between them to create images that may be driven at a master.
The communication processing unit 15 network-processes the images created at the control unit 10, converts the result to UART or USB serial data, and transmits the result to the master device 16.
In addition, the master device 16 manages a profibus network on the basis of the received images and controls the operations and data flows of the slave device 16.
Configuration information on this profibus network and profibus DP network device configuration information must be kept and managed in accordance with an industrial device that is operated and maintained for decades, such as a steel plant and an automobile production line. Since a long time elapses however, the initial configuration information is likely to be lost due to the retirement of engineers or the occurrence of a natural disaster.
In addition, when building an automation facility, there is the problem that it is very cumbersome for network devices that participate in setup to share the changes that are made in network configuration information files and make the versions match.
In addition, there is a problem that although rapid restoration is needed when a problem occurs while operating a master device, time is required for restoration because production lines and data storages are at different locations.